IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event.

By Jacob Stockinger

Here is another gift list that The Ear just found. Even though it was compiled before the holiday, he looked for it but didn’t find it.

It’s another of the top classical recordings of 2018. But this time, the list – with plenty of sound samples — comes from WQXR, the famed classical music radio station in New York City.

It may be too late to use for holiday gift giving – unless it is for yourself. After all, there are a lot of gift cards waiting to be redeemed.

Also below are several other lists so that you can cross-check and compare. The CD of Chopin ballades and nocturnes by Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes (below), for example, makes almost all the lists, which is a good sign of quality. (You can hear Andsnes play the Ballade No. 4, The Ear’s favorite, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event.

ALERT: Today we turn a corner when the Winter Solstice arrives at 4:23 p.m. Days will start getting longer. What music would you celebrate it with? Antonio Vivaldi’s “Winter” section of “The Four Seasons”? Franz Schubert’s “Winterreise” or “Winter Journey”? Let The Ear know in the COMMENT section with a YouTube link if possible. Here comes the sun!

On Wednesday night at the Middleton Performing Arts Center, the mostly amateur Middleton Community Orchestra (below) proudly presented an alternative Christmas program of music, none of which had any connection whatsoever with that otherwise inescapable holiday.

It was a program of great variety, full of novelties.

It began soberly with Gustav Mahler’s early song cycle, the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer). This venture into German orchestral song (with a folk song background) provided symphonic inspiration for his First Symphony, the so-called “Titan,” so it unites many strains in the composer’s work.

Baritone Paul Rowe (below), of the UW-Madison’s music faculty, sang these songs. Rowe has a strong feeling for German, and he used clear diction to capture the dramatic meanings of the four song texts.

A contrast then, and a particular novelty, was the appearance of Matthew Coley (below), of the percussion ensemble Clocks in Motion, playing the cimbalom, the intensely Hungarian version of the hammered dulcimer.

He was joined by the orchestra for a fancy arrangement of the Hungarian dance, the popular Czardas by Vittorio Monti. (You can hear Matthew Coley play the same piece on the cimbalom in the YouTube video at the bottom.) He followed this with an encore, a hand-me-down arrangement of a movement from one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s solo cello suites.

More contrast came with the mini-ballet score by Darius Milhaud Le Boeuf sur le toit (The Ox on the Roof) of 1919. This was one of the French composer’s trailblazing introductions of American jazz styles into European music.

It really works best with a small orchestra, so Middleton’s was a bit overblown for the assignment. But the elaborate solo role for violin was taken by Naha Greenholtz — concertmaster of the Madison Symphony Orchestra and wife of the evening’s guest conductor, Kyle Knox, who is the music director of Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras and the Associate Conductor of the Madison Symphony Orchestra. There are some fiendish passages in the solo work, and Greenholtz brought them off with unfailing flair.

The final part of the program was devoted to the orchestral suite that Zoltan Kodaly derived from his Singspiel of 1926, Hary Janos, in which a comic Hungarian soldier upstages even Napoleon.

This is a satiric and highly colorful assemblage that offers wonderful opportunities for all of the instruments and sections to show off. And Coley was back with his cimbalom for Hungarian spice. The players clearly were having a great frolic, and conductor Knox drew the best out of them in a bravura performance.

Ah yes! Christmas without “Christmas” music. A wonderful idea to refresh the ears in December!

IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, PLEASE FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event.

By Jacob Stockinger

This weekend the Oakwood Chamber Players (below) continue their 2018-2019 season series “Vignettes” with a holiday concert on this Saturday night, Nov. 24, at 7 p.m. and Sunday afternoon, Nov. 25, at 2 p.m.

On the program is a range of musical styles and a charming story set for chamber ensemble and narrator.

The cheery holiday-themed program will include familiar seasonal music, treasured classical composers, entertaining arrangements, and some delightful musical storytelling.

Both concerts will be held at the Oakwood Center for Arts and Education, 6209 Mineral Point Road, on Madison’s far west side near West Towne Mall.

Tickets can be purchased with cash or personal checks at the door: the cost is $25 for general admission, $20 for seniors, and $5 for students. For more information, go to: www.oakwoodchamberplayers.com or call (608) 230-4316.

The program includes music from two beloved classical composers: “Joseph, dearest, Joseph mine” from “Geistliches Wiegenlied” by Johannes Brahms; and Suite of Christmas Songs, Op. 72, by Felix Mendelssohn.

In 1927, “The Adoration of the Magi” (below) by Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, who did many scenes of that subject, inspired Italian composer Ottorino Respighi to create an evocative composition that weaves traditional carols into his musical response to the famous painting. This version has been arranged for chamber ensemble of flute, harp and cello. (You can hear the orchestral version in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

The group will be joined by special guest artist baritone Robert “Bobby” Goderich, who has appeared with the Madison Opera and the Four Seasons Theatre. He will sing an upbeat version of the traditional Welsh Gower Wassail as well as performing Silent Night set for the intimate combination of voice, clarinet and harp.

Central to the program, Goderich (below) will narrate Sweep Dreams, an enchanting tale about a lonely man who falls in love with an enchanted broom that dances in the moonlight.

The story by the late and prize-winning author Nancy Willard (below top) was set to music by the late and renowned American choral composer Stephen Paulus (below bottom), who lived in Minneapolis and created the piece while he was composer-in-residence for the Minnesota Orchestra.

Additional works on the concert are “A Winter’s Night” by American composer Kevin McKee (below) for flugelhorn and harp, Australian composer Percy Grainger’s warm-hearted setting of “Sussex Mummers’ Carol,” and two sunny woodwind quintet settings of beloved holiday songs.

This is the second of five concerts in the Oakwood Chamber Players’ 2018-2019 season series entitled Vignettes. Remaining concerts will take place in 2019 on Jan. 12 and 13; March 2 and 3; and May 18 and 19.

The Oakwood Chamber Players are a group of Madison-area professional musicians who have rehearsed and performed at Oakwood Village for over 30 years.

The Oakwood Chamber Players are a professional music ensemble proudly supported by Oakwood Lutheran Senior Ministries and the Oakwood Foundation.

IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, PLEASE FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR SHARE IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event.

By Jacob Stockinger

The Ear has received the following announcement for a concert that sounds in keeping with the spirit of Halloween:

The Chicago Gargoyle Brass and Organ Ensemble (below, in a photo by Thomas Mohr) will lead listeners on aural adventures through space, time and fantasy at its “Imaginary Journeys” concert TONIGHT, Oct. 27.

The concert is FREE and open to the public, and will take place at 7 p.m. at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 5701 Raymond Road, in Madison.

The professional ensemble of brass quintet and pipe organ, with percussion, will perform the Madison premieres of new works and arrangements it recently commissioned for its novel array of instruments.

The concert’s namesake work, “Imaginary Journeys,” was written for the ensemble by Chicago-area composer Mark Lathan. It takes listeners on a rocket-powered interstellar adventure, inspired by recent astronomical discoveries.

“For this piece,” Lathan says, “I wanted to bring in some drama, somewhat in the manner of a film score.” Lathan earned a doctorate in music from the University of California at Los Angeles, where he received the Henry Mancini Award in Film Composition and studied film scoring with Jerry Goldsmith.

Another Madison premiere is Craig Garner’s brass-and-organ arrangement of Igor Stravinsky’s ever-popular Suite from “The Firebird,” a ballet based on Russian fairy tales. “The audience will hear an all-time favorite orchestral work like it’s never been heard before,” says Rodney Holmes, founder and artistic director of the Chicago Gargoyle Brass and Organ Ensemble.

Concertgoers will also hear the first local performances of “Short Fuse” for brass, organ and percussion by Chris Reyman (below), a jazz performance specialist teaching at the University of Texas at El Paso. Holmes says, “This piece shows off a very different face of what a pipe organ and brass can do.”

Other first hearings include Garner’s two-part instrumental suite from English Baroque composer Henry Purcell’s “Come Ye Sons of Art.”

The concert’s imaginative works include “Earthscape” by David Marlatt (below, and heard in the YouTube video at the bottom) as well as pipe-organ versions of “Clair de lune” (Moonlight) by Claude Debussy and Louis Vierne.

Performers will include Madison-based organist Jared Stellmacher (below), an award-winning musician heard on the Chicago Gargoyle Brass and Organ Ensemble’s critically acclaimed 2015 debut CD “Flourishes, Tales and Symphonies.” He holds a master’s degree in music from Yale University.

“The Chicago Gargoyle Brass and Organ Ensemble plays with warmth, elegance, and panache,” said U.S. music magazine Fanfare in a review of the ensemble’s debut CD. “[They] are perfect companions for the music lover in need of calming nourishment.”

The group takes its whimsical name from the stone figures atop gothic buildings at the University of the Chicago, where the now-professional ensemble got its start in 1992 as a brass quintet of faculty and students.

Under its founder and artistic director Rodney Holmes, it has evolved over the decades into an independent organization of classically trained musicians that focuses on commissioning and performing groundbreaking new works and arrangements for brass and pipe organ. More information can be found at gargoylebrass.com.

IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, PLEASE FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR SHARE IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event.

By Jacob Stockinger

TONIGHT, Tuesday, Oct. 23

At 7:30 p.m. in Overture Hall, Paul Jacobs (below) will perform an all-Bach program. Jacobs, who is the only organist to have won a Grammy Award, is the chair of the organ department at the Juilliard school in New York City and was the teacher and mentor of Greg Zelek, who is the new organist for the Madison Symphony Orchestra.

Heralded as “one of the major musicians of our time” by Alex Ross of The New Yorker and as “America’s leading organ performer” by The Economist, the internationally celebrated Jacobs combines a probing intellect and extraordinary technical mastery with an unusually large repertoire, both old and new. He has performed to great critical acclaim on five continents and in each of the 50 United States.

Jacobs made musical history at age 23 when he played Bach’s complete organ works in an 18-hour marathon performance on the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death. (You can hear Jacobs play Bach in the YouTube video at the bottom.) Jacobs has premiered works by Samuel Adler, Mason Bates, Michael Daugherty, Wayne Oquin, Stephen Paulus, Christopher Theofanidis and Christopher Rouse, among others.

During the 2018-19 season, Jacobs will perform the world premiere of John Harbison’s “What Do We Make of Bach?” for organ and orchestra with the Minnesota Orchestra under conductor Osmo Vanska; with the Cleveland Orchestra he will give the American premiere of Austrian composer Bernd Richard Deutsch’s “Okeanos” for organ and orchestra.

At 7:30 p.m. in Mills Hall, the UW Concert Band will perform a FREE concert of music by Leonard Bernstein (excerpts from “Candide”), Vincent Persichetti, Percy Grainger, Mark Markowski and Steven Bryant.

At 7:30 p.m. in Mills Hall, the Wisconsin Brass Quintet and special guest UW percussionist Anthony DiSanza (below, in a photo by Katherine Esposito) will perform a ticketed concert of genre-bending music by Michael Tilson Thomas, Pat Metheny, Modest Mussorgsky, Alan Ferber, James Parker and David Sanford.

Admission is $17 for adults, $7 for students and children.

For more information about the performers, the program and how to purchase tickets, go to:

At 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, the Pro Arte Quartet will perform a FREE concert.

The program features: the String Quartet in C Major, D. 46 (1813), by the young Franz Schubert; Three Rags for String Quartet (“Poltergeist” from 1971, “Graceful Ghost” from 1970, and “Incinteratorag” from 1967) by William Bolcom; and the String Quartet in E minor, Op. 44, No. 2 (1837), by Felix Mendelssohn.

Presenting music never before heard in Wisconsin, Clocks in Motion Percussion will be performing classic repertoire and local premieres in this special event.

Here is the complete program: *”Gravity” by Marc Melltis; *Atomic Atomic” by Andrew Rindfleisch (below and heard in the YouTube video at the bottom); “Third Construction” by John Cage; selections from “Threads” by Paul Lansky; “Mechanical Ballet” by Anders Koppel; “Fantezie” by Sergiu Cretu; and “Glitz!” Bejorn Berkhout

*Denotes this piece was written specifically for Clocks in Motion.

Hailed as “nothing short of remarkable” (ClevelandClassical.com) and “the most exciting addition to Madison’s classical music scene” (Isthmus), Clocks in Motion is a percussion quartet that performs new music, builds many of its own instruments, and breaks down the boundaries of the traditional concert program.

Formed in 2011, Clocks in Motion is quickly becoming a major artistic force in today’s contemporary music scene. Among its many recent and upcoming engagements, the group served as performers at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan; The Stone in New York City; The Overture Center for the Arts; Casper College in Wyoming; the University of Michigan;, Baldwin-Wallace University in Ohio; the University of North Carolina-Pembroke; and the Ewell Concert Series in Virginia.

EDGEWOOD CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

The Edgewood Chamber Orchestra will give a concert on this Sunday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. in the newly remodeled St. Joseph Chapel, 1000 Edgewood College Drive.

The orchestra will perform under the baton of Blake Walter (below).

The program features three arrangements of piano works by Claude Debussy; Arabesques 1 and2, arranged by Henri Mouton, and the seldom-performed Sarabande, arranged by Maurice Ravel.

Other works to be performed include Luigi Cherubini’s Overture to the opera Medea, and Symphony No. 59, subtitled “Fire,” by Franz Joseph Haydn.

Admission is $5 for the general public, free with Edgewood College ID.

London has long been a international hub of culture, with a special reputation as the home base of many of the great musicians who perform regularly on the Continent.

But how will “Brexit” affect the future of classical music and classical musicians in Great Britain?

Some pretty prominent, active and knowledgeable musicians, including the pianist-conductors Vladimir Ashkenazy and Daniel Barenboim, think it will be for the worst.

One sign is that the European Youth Orchestra (below, in a photo by Peter Adamik, and in the YouTube video at the bottom), which receives a subsidy from the European Union, is moving from London to the city of Ferrara in Italy before Great Britain exits from the European Union.

A particular cause of concern is what kind of confused logistics will happen if visas are required for British groups to tour and perform on the Continent, something that apparently has opera houses especially worried.

A recent story goes into more detail, including charges from Brexit defenders that musicians and representatives of the culture industries in general are being alarmist.

It has been a good year for new music in Madison, which has often seemed inhospitable to that music in the past.

Among major contributors have been the LunART Festival of contemporary women composers; programs by the UW Symphony Orchestra and other UW-Madison groups and individuals; the Madison Opera; the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society; the Willy Street Chamber Players; and the Oakwood Chamber Players. Plus, The Ear is sure there are many other contributors he is overlooking.

But the largest share of the credit has to go to a three-day annual festival of living composers that will take place for the third year this coming weekend. (Photos from last year’s well-attended festival are by Max Schmidt.)

Here is an announcement from the festival with the details:

The third annual Madison New Music Festival will take place this coming Friday, Aug. 10, Saturday, Aug. 11, and Sunday, Aug. 12.

The Madison New Music Festival is an annual weekend-long concert series dedicated to strengthening Madison’s cultural vitality through the celebration of fresh classical music from our lifetimes.

Founded by Madison native composer Zachary Green (below bottom), the festival presents new works by some of the world’s leading living composers, shines a spotlight on new music created in Wisconsin, and shares underplayed music of the 20th and 21st centuries with the Madison community.

Every concert will also have a world premiere of music that has never been heard before. On the opening night, Conduit is performing a new piece by Kyle Tieman-Strauss called Abject. The next day, organist Tyler Jameson Pimm premieres his new piece Psalm 22. Then on Sunday, listeners get to hear the premiere of They’re Still Here by BC Grimm, featuring music for nine different instruments (all of which will be played by Grimm himself).

Over the course of three concerts around town, we are featuring a total of 17 musicians playing the works of 25 composers, all of which were written in the last 50 years.

Though each concert has a different theme, every performance features music by Wisconsin composers, composers of color, and both men and women.

Fifteen of our musicians were born, raised or currently reside in Wisconsin, but we’re bringing several back to town just for the festival. They include members of the Madison, Milwaukee and Quad City symphonies; and graduates of Juilliard, the Manhattan School of Music, Mannes Conservatory, Northwestern University, and, of course, the UW-Madison.

Hear sounds born out of the ’60s counterculture with works exploring minimalism, social and political engagement, and electronic experimentation, as well as the music they inspired for decades to come. There will be a cash bar, as well as opportunities to explore the exhibits.

Kick back a drink as local musician BC Grimm plays his original works for instruments from cello to Chinese Guqin zither, followed by a set of music for solo strings. Then, the musicians from all three concerts come together for a performance of the 1973 piece “Stay On It” — heard in the YouTube video the bottom — by Julius Eastman (below).

The Youth Orchestra (below top) of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras has landed in Peru, and has already rehearsed, and will officially launch its 10-day tour — which includes the capital city of Cusco and the ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu (below bottom) — with a performance tonight in Lima.

And thanks to the foresight of the WYSO staff, you can follow the young musicians, along with retired WYSO music director and conductor James Smith, each step of the way until the tour ends on July 15:

And here is a link to more about the tour — including repertoire by Leonard Bernstein , Malcolm Arnold and Dmitri Shostakovich — and to the group, which gave its send-off concert this past Tuesday night at Olbrich Botanical Gardens:

The second weekend of the three-weekend summer series of concerts by the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society features two performances each of two programs.

The programs in this 27th season with its “Toy Stories” theme – “Play-Do(h)” and “GI Joe” – will be performed at The Playhouse (below) of the Overture Center on Friday and Saturday night at 7:30 p.m.

Sunday performances are at the Hillside Theater (below) at Taliesin, at the Frank Lloyd Wright compound in Spring Green, at 2:30 and 6:30 p.m.

Each program introduces elements of drama, using a narrator, and of dance.

The works include “The Kitchen Revue” by Bohuslav Martinu and “The Masked Ball” by Francis Poulenc as well as “Einstein on Mercer Street” by American composer Kevin Puts and “The Solder’s Tale” by Igor Stravinsky. (You can hear the first part of the Stravinsky work — “The Soldier’s March” — with Jeremy Irons narrating and the composer conducting in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

The baritone singer is Timothy Jones (below top), a longtime favorite of BDDS audiences, and Milwaukee-based hip-hop dancer and choreographer Blake Washington (below bottom), who is returning for his second season with BDDS.

Here is a link to the introduction and complete schedule to the entire summer season, including a FREE concert of “American Haiku: for violin and cello this coming Wednesday night:

Also included this weekend are various works for bassoon, flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, double bass and percussion by Alexandre Tansman; Georg Philipp Telemann, Gabriel Pierné and Robert Schumann.

A bonus to notice: This year for the first time, at the Hillside Theater at Taliesin, Enos Farms is offering picnic dinners that can be ordered, then picked up and eaten outside or in the Taliesin dining room. For food reservations, go to Tickets at http://bachdancing.org